Iran’s enrichment right preserved in nuclear deal: Zarif

ISLAMABAD: Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the country’s right to uranium enrichment is respectfully preserved in the nuclear agreement with the six world powers.

Speaking at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport upon return from Geneva on Sunday evening, Zarif said all member states of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) have the right to use peaceful nuclear energy and “in the present agreement, it has been emphasized at two different points that there will be no solution without the existence of a nuclear enrichment programme inside Iran,” Mehar news agency reported.

After more than four days of intense negotiations, Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, the US, Britain, Russia, France, China, plus Germany, sealed an interim deal in Geneva on Sunday morning to pave the way for the full resolution of the West’s decade-old dispute with Iran over the country’s nuclear energy program.

Zarif noted that the interim deal is only a first step and that Iran is ready to start negotiations with the West for a final solution. “We are ready to begin the final stage of nuclear agreement from tomorrow,” Zarif said. Thanking the Iranian people for their “resistance against pressures” over the past years, Zarif said that the Iranian nation showed that no one can talk to them through pressure.

Zarif and Iran’s nuclear negotiators were given a warm welcome by hundreds of Iranians who had gathered at the airport several hours before their arrival. Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
have also hailed the Geneva nuclear accord.

According to the Iranian Foreign Ministry, the deal allows Iran to continue its activities at Arak, Fordow, and Natanz facilities.

The agreement also stipulates that no additional sanctions will be imposed on Tehran over its nuclear energy programme.